She checked into the cheap, no-tell motel still wearing her wedding dress, but she had tossed the veil and bouquet out the window somewhere south of Waco.

She answered the twentieth—or was it the twenty-fifth?—call from her father.

“Hello, Daddy,” she said. “I just couldn’t marry Eli even if—”

When her father was angry, he whispered. She could barely hear him when he said, “Wherever you are, you have responsibilities, so get your ass home.”

“I’ve got to get things sorted out,” she said. “I’ll come back to Dallas when I—”

“You will come back right now,” her father butted in before she could finish.

She ended the call and turned off her phone for two days. When she turned it back on she had four missed calls and two voicemail messages from her cousin Becky telling her that Granny Lizzie’s will had been read and that she had inherited one-third of both the Catfish Fisherman’s Hut and Granny Lizzie’s house, which was located right beside it. She dried her eyes, forced herself to stop crying, and called Becky. She told her she’d be there before supper, and then she took a quick shower, got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and picked up the garment bag holding her wedding dress and took it out to her car first. The thing filled the whole back seat, and she didn’t ever plan on wearing it again, but she just couldn’t leave it behind. She went back inside her dingy little room and hauled out her two hot-pink suitcases, which contained everything she needed for a honeymoon in the Colorado mountains. The third trip back into the room was just to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind. Before she left, she checked her reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Her black hair still had droplets of water hanging on her ponytail, and her green eyes had dark circles around them. She should stop by Dallas and try to explain how she felt to Eli, but her hands trembled at the thought of facing him.

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter if I look like crap. I’m going to Catfish, Texas, to work in a bait shop. I’m not having dinner tonight with the queen, not even if Becky acts like she is royalty.” She left the room key on the nightstand and locked the door behind her, got into her little red sports car, and headed north toward the Red River.

“I love you, Granny Lizzie,” Lainie sobbed as she drove. “Why did you have to die right before my wedding. I needed you to be there to tell me that marriage was tough enough when a woman loves a man, and impossible if she doesn’t.”

I was there in spirit, and I think you got the message. The voice in her head was as clear as if her grandmother had been sitting right beside her.

She didn’t like the idea of working in the Catfish Fisherman’s Hut or living with her two older, bossy cousins, but that was better than going back to Dallas. She hadn’t even gotten out of Houston when the phone rang. She sucked in a lungful of air and hit the accept button.